Cite as: 520 U. S. 564 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
chaser or seller may "favor its own citizens over others." Alexandria Scrap, 426 U. S., at 810.
Maine's tax exemption statute cannot be characterized as a proprietary activity falling within the market-participant exception. In New Energy Co., Ohio argued similarly that a discriminatory tax credit program fell within the exception. We noted that the tax program had "the purpose and effect of subsidizing a particular industry, as do many dispositions of the tax laws." 486 U. S., at 277. "That," we explained, "does not transform it into a form of state participation in the free market." Ibid. "The Ohio action ultimately at issue is neither its purchase nor its sale of ethanol, but its assessment and computation of taxes—a primeval governmental activity." Ibid. As we indicated in White: "[I]n this kind of case there is 'a single inquiry: whether the challenged "program constituted direct state participation in the market." ' " 460 U. S., at 208 (quoting Reeves, 447 U. S., at 436, n. 7). A tax exemption is not the sort of direct state involvement in the market that falls within the market-participation doctrine.
Even if we were prepared to expand the exception in the manner suggested by the Town, the Maine tax statute at issue here would be a poor candidate. Like the tax exemption upheld in Walz—which applied to libraries, art galleries, and hospitals as well as churches 28—the exemption that has been denied to petitioner is available to a broad category of charitable and benevolent institutions.29 For that reason, nothing short of a dramatic expansion of the "market-28 See Walz, 397 U. S., at 666-667, and n. 1.
29 See Me. Rev. Stat. Ann., Tit. 36, § 652(1)(A) (Supp. 1996) ("For the purposes of this paragraph, 'benevolent and charitable institutions' include, but are not limited to, nonprofit nursing homes and nonprofit boarding homes and boarding care facilities . . . , nonprofit community mental health service facilities . . . [,] and nonprofit child care centers") (emphasis added).
593
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